Tragicomedy and Contemporary Culture: Play and Performance from Beckett to Shepard (Edinburgh Studies in Culture and Society)

This study examines the historical relationship between tragicomedy in the modernist theatre and the performative culture of Western consumer societies. While discussing a wide range of playwrights, it focusses specifically on the work of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Sam Shepard. Their plays, it is argued, illuminate the forms of pleasure, fear, performance and corruption which dominate our daily lives. Tragicomedy is seen as unique becuae of the existential playfulness and confusion of its protagonists, and because of its muted vision of apocalypse in the nuclear age. Front Matter....Pages i-vi Modernism and Tragicomedy....Pages 1-9 Play and Performative Culture....Pages 10-32 The Resistance of Commodities....Pages 33-46 Samuel Beckett: Imprisoned Persona and Irish Amnesia....Pages 47-71 Anglo-Tragic: Pinter and the English Tradition....Pages 72-87 Pinter: The Game of the Shared Experience....Pages 88-108 Shepard I: The Rise of Myth/The Fall of Community....Pages 109-129 Shepard II: The Shock of the Normal....Pages 130-144 Shepard III: Re-Enacting the Myth of Origin....Pages 145-157 Back Matter....Pages 158-170 A perceptive study of the relationship between contemporary play writing and the society that gives rise to it John Orr. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 162-165) And Index.